The mayor of Mexico City

Backroom boss

The left’s moderate radical

IT IS an unlikely place for the world's largest artificial ice-rink. But this month for the second year in a row the Zócalo, Mexico City's main square, is abuzz with skaters. The rink is the brainchild of Marcelo Ebrard, the city's mayor. Like several of his initiatives, it is practical and popular—the hallmarks of a politician who may be the best hope for Mexico's deeply divided left.

Mr Ebrard took office two years ago as the protégé of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who, after a term as mayor, narrowly lost the 2006 presidential election to Felipe Calderón. Both men began their political careers in the formerly ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) before joining a left-wing breakaway, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). But in other ways they differ greatly.

Mr López Obrador's refusal to accept electoral defeat, and his branding of Mr Calderón as “illegitimate”, has divided and discredited his party. Whereas he is an orator and agitator of the streets (his protest occupied the Zócalo for months), his successor operates behind the scenes. He never criticises his former boss openly, but Mr Ebrard is a more conciliatory figure for whom “conflicts have their limits”.

He has gradually emerged as his own man. To match the winter ice-rink, he created a Parisian-style archipelago of artificial beaches in the summer. To promote cycling a main avenue is closed to traffic on Sundays. He says he wants to set up 400km (250 miles) of cycle lanes. On his watch, Mexico City has become one of the first places in Latin America to ban smoking in bars and restaurants; it is also one of the few places where abortion is legal. The mayor recently promised free Viagra to men over the age of 70. He has also managed to move some 15,000 street vendors out of the city centre—a tricky operation given that they have traditionally formed part of the PRD's political clientele.

But his tenure as mayor will be judged on his success in tackling congestion and crime. An ambitious plan to create a network of dedicated bus lanes of equal size to the 175km metro system is behind schedule (though its second route opened this month). But this does represent a serious attempt to tame the city's traffic problem. A new 25km metro line is also being built. The mayor says he will hire 20,000 extra police during his six-year term. He wants to improve their quality: half will be women, and all will be required to have completed secondary school. They will be offered subsidised housing and scholarships for their children.

Mr Ebrard cautions that the police will not “change overnight”. Nonetheless, critics say he has not done enough to clean up a problem-plagued force. José Fernández Santillán, a political scientist at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, a university, says that many newly hired police still had to pay a bribe to get the job. Opponents complain that the city government spends excessively on promoting Mr Ebrard and that contracts have been doled out to his political allies. His supporters deny this.

The PRD is bitterly split between Mr López Obrador's followers and a more moderate faction. Mr Ebrard may be one of the few figures who can bridge the divide. He says that Mexico's deep inequalities mean that the PRD cannot just be a moderate European centre-left party, but nor can it be so radical as to become a movement outside the country's institutions. Mr López Obrador may run again for the presidency in 2012. But provided he succeeds as mayor, Mr Ebrard may turn into a formidable rival to his former mentor.